3/7/2011

You’ve already seen the Qaddafi or Sheen quiz, so here’s a related one. The answer may well surprise you:

This is very good news. They continue to be in breach, like so many whales. It is a big day of gladness at the Sober Valley Lodge because now I can take all of the bazillions, never have to look at whatshiscock again and I never have to put on those silly shirts for as long as this warlock exists in the terrestrial dimension.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

This column in the Daily Caller is so transparent, it’s kind of fun for that reason:

Is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie unpatriotic?

Well, if Christie believes what he has been saying about America’s fiscal crisis and his chances of winning the presidency and yet still chooses not to make a White House run in 2012, the short answer is yes.

That sounds harsh, but Christie’s own words box him in.

Except of course I think Christie is more than smart enough to see through this. But I would bet he would think it’s funny, too.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Update: About 6 minutes to go. He has indicated I will be on much sooner than last time.

Update (II): I am off, and I think it went well. I mentioned an article talking about the potential unconstitutionality of Obamacare. Aside from the obvious equal protection argument when you treat workers from Target different from Walmart, there is a question of whether the president can rightfully have the power to suspend of dispense with laws, discussed here.

As you might remember, John Smart had asked me to appear on his “internet radio” program almost a month ago to discuss Vinson’s big Obamacare ruling and I think it went okay, although I never summoned up the nerve to listen to myself. Well, over the weekend he asked if I would be willing to come on again, tonight, mainly to discuss Judge Vinson’s latest ruling. Our exchanges and this blog post suggests he also wants to talk about the over 1,000 waivers granted by the Obama Administration, and also about Judge Kessler’s wonderful ruling (sarcasm intended).

Anyway, his show starts at 6 p.m. on the west coast, 9 p.m. Eastern Time and it appears that you will be able to listen at this link.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Via Glenn Reynolds we learn that last month’s deficit was larger than the deficit was in all 2007. That is right, in one month—the shortest month of the year—we racked up more additional debt than the entire year of 2007.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated Friday that the U.S. federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2007, which ended Sunday, was about $161 billion, or 1.2% of gross domestic product. That’s down from the $248 billion shortfall recorded in fiscal 2006, which translated into 1.9% of GDP. The Treasury Department will report the official tally later this month.

And bear in mind, we aren’t talking about the debt, but the deficit. That isn’t how much we owe, but how much we have added to how much we owe.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

(Note: the part about “Ponies” is a joke. He never said that, as far as I know.)

I guess you have to give him credit for not claiming it is already in the Constitution, right?

Still basically his solution to all our economic woes is to create a new entitlement, forcing the government to spend taxpayer dollars to buy stuff:

When asked later whether his free Ipod amendment could be satisfied with a free Zune, he was quoted as saying, “of course not. That would violate the Eighth Amendment!”

I mean you gotta love the specificity of it. Not just the misnomer “mp3 player” but a specific brand. No word on whether he would require a certain amount of memory in it.

God, there is so much wrong with this I hardly know where to begin. First, there is nothing presently in the Constitution that would prevent the Federal Government from buying a bunch of laptops and Ipods and giving it to everyone and… No, wait, delete that. I don’t want to give them ideas. Still you have to be amazed with his economic analysis which seems to be completely unconcerned with issues such as “how the hell do we pay for that?” I’m sure our credit will still be good with China, right?

Of course if you oppose this proposal because it is wildly irresponsible socialism, then clearly you are a racist.

Joking aside, this is the fundamental shift in the relationship between the individual and the state that is being brought about by Obamacare. The state becomes the provider of everything. And the government big enough to give you everything is the government powerful enough to take it away.

A case in point, the Daily Mail reports that Dr. Daphne Austin, described as “a leading [National Health Service] official” has said that any baby born below the age of 23 weeks should just be allowed to die. This is what central control leads to: people start to play God with your life and the lives of others. And people become valued simply for what they give to society, instead of life being inherently precious, while sugar-daddy government shows that it can give and it can take.

I recently finished Decision Points by George W Bush. It is an interesting read — well worth the $18.99 Amazon is charging (or, better yet, the $14.99 that I paid to read it on the Kindle).

Bush discusses major decision points in his presidency, having to do with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the response to 9/11, the fiscal crisis that arose at the end of his presidency, and many others.

In many places, Bush acknowledges where his assessments went wrong. For example, after he said of Vladimir Putin that “I was able to get a sense of his soul,” Bush wryly says: “In the years ahead, Putin would give me reasons to revise my opinion.”

Some of his admissions don’t go far enough, in my view. Bush is defensive about not catching Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, and claims he is not at fault. That may be, but I think there is plenty of evidence that his administration had bin Laden in its grasp, but devoted insufficient troops to the task of tightening the noose, allowing local warlords to let bin Laden slip through the cracks. See, for example, the evidence provided in Jon Krakauer’s book about Pat Tillman: Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.

The book has some amusing lines. For example, after the 2004 election, Bush says he hugged a group of senior aides, and then gave Dick Cheney a hearty handshake, explaining: “Dick isn’t really the hugging type.” Speaking of hugging, Bush says in the midst of a discussion of his unprecedented (and too-often forgotten) fight again AIDS in Africa that he had been told by the director of an agency fighting AIDS that Bush was “the first world leader he had seen hug an African with AIDS.”

One passage I found very interesting related to his handling of Katrina. Bush says he should have taken a far more active role early on in the crisis. He says that, despite the fact that responsibility for responding to the disaster lay initially and principally with the mayor and governor, the president nevertheless needed to get out front of the crisis and show he was a leader. It is a lesson that many could learn — I was reminded of it, for example, when Chris Christie went to Disney World during a major blizzard in New Jersey. If you want to be a leader, you have to show it at moments of crisis, and this is a lesson Bush imparts well by discussing where he failed to follow this advice.

The book is well-written, and the picture that emerges is of a man far smarter than he is given credit for by the numbskulls of the left. His presidency was not perfect, by any means, but now that Barack Obama is in charge … yes, we miss you, Mr. President.

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[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

So on Fox News Sunday Chris Wallace ran an interview with the Westboro Baptist’s lead lawyer, Margie Phelps, to discuss their recent Supreme Court victory and just who exactly is going to hell. Wallace did an expert job of making them look like a bunch of jerks by the simple technique of giving them enough rope to hang themselves. Believe you me, this was an intentional ploy to get them to expose their idiotic mentality. I have seen it done dozens of times in cross-examination:

So Think Progress decides that somehow this is an indictment on Fox News. Yes, really.

The title of the post, for instance, suggests approval: “Fox Hosts Hate-Church Lawyer Who Claims Obama Is ‘The Beast Spoken Of In The Revelation.’” And in the post they suggest that this is presented as “legal analysis.”

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court held that even the most repulsive hate speech — Westboro Baptist Church’s anti-gay rallies at military funerals — is entitled to First Amendment protection. At the top of its show this morning, Fox invited one of the leading purveyors of such repulsive speech, Westboro’s attorney Margie Phelps, as its sole commentator on this Court decision. Phelps, who is the daughter of hate church leader Fred Phelps, provided exactly the same kind of thoughtful legal analysis that Americans expect from Fox News[.]

So basically they are upset that this is the only commenter on the decision, on the program that day. But it had already been covered to death by other hosts, so it hardly seems necessary to add more (and that is assuming they are telling the truth). And it is simply a lie to say that this is the kind of “legal analysis” provided by Fox News. A simple search of Patterico’s site for “Megyn Kelly” will turn up many examples of quite expert legal analysis, not to mention that from Greta, and O’Reilly’s femme fatales. Finally, they end by saying:

It’s telling that in a week which featured… [many other important stories], Fox decided to ignore these stories in order to focus on the important question of whether President Obama is the Antichrist.

Well, first, Wallace didn’t choose where this interview went. He asked precisely about whether Obama was going to hell. And that was just after asking if the Supreme Court was going to hell. And if they are trying to suggest that he agreed with them on Obama, then by the same logic, he must think that the entire Supreme Court is going to hell, including the justices conservatives typically like, such as Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito. And it is worth noting that all of those justices, but Alito, ruled in their favor—which is probably why Wallace asked in the first place.

It all raises the question of whether this deception is done on purpose. Its hard to say, but anyone watches that interview and honestly believes that Wallace agreed with this Westboro idiot is so prejudiced against Fox News that they can literally do nothing right in their eyes. If that actually includes anyone from Think Progress (and I think that would be crediting them with too much honesty), then they should find a new job: their prejudice literally makes it impossible to see the truth right in front of them.

And if the author, Ian Millhiser, was simply lying, TP should fire him for being so terrible at it. I only had to watch the interview to see that he was full of it.